Hot Girls for Labor Movements?
In the months leading up to NYC's primary mayoral election, people could be seen wearing "Hot Girls for Zohran" shirts. What does that movement say about the future of progressive campaigning?
The morning of New York City’s primary election, I opened my Instagram feed to a video of model Emily Ratajkowski smiling alongside mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. EmRata, as she is known, was wearing a “Hot Girls for Zohran” t-shirt for her 29 million followers—unabashedly urging New Yorkers to vote for a worker-first candidate whose platform includes free buses, universal childcare, and rent freezes.
While it may seem like a silly stunt—or just the basic realization that “sex sells” on the day of an election—it also marked a signifier of the change in progressive political campaigning. While EmRata had previously campaigned for Bernie, upending the idea that a model and influencer might not usually be the face of a blue-collar workers’ candidate, the stakes are now higher.
Politics is downstream from culture, and that culture today requires that candidates now appeal to people’s sense of humor, delight, and interest in what’s “popular.” Soberly laying out an academic policy platform—or even just telling everyone what’s wrong with today—doesn’t seem to be cutting it anymore. Compassion fatigue is real; meanwhile, beyond wanting to feel financially secure, many people still want caché in the culture—to be replicate the practices and ideologies of influencer personas who can transcend the political realm.
Most recently demonstrated through Gavin Newsom’s cheeky social media posts taunting Trump, an embrace of silliness, meme culture, and charisma seems like the inevitable way forward for a Democratic Party facing a president adept at verbal gymnastics, a saturated and fragmented media market separating our realities, and ever-fleeting attention spans pushing people away from any story that seem too complicated to understand.
Plus, co-opting the “hot girl” faction in the face of rhetoric like this may also subvert traditional conservative notions of what a progressive person is. No longer are progressives the purity soldiers policing words—but authentic digital comics and charismatic short-form storytellers meeting voters where they are at emotionally and psychologically.
Hard Reset spoke to Cait Camelia, a graphic designer based in NYC who founded “Hot Girls for Zohran,” about the genesis of the movement, the “boyfriend vote” for Zohran, making apathy uncool, and what’s next for progressive messaging in New York and beyond.
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Ariella Steinhorn: In my mind, it’s really subversive to co-opt the “hot girls for whatever cause,” because a lot of society still wants to be “hot” or around “hot girls” — including many of the powerful men who run staunchly against socialism or who push hyper-capitalist agendas. Did this factor into your campaign, the idea that a coveted brand of “hotness” would be moved away into less money-focused realms?
Cait Camelia: When we chose the slogan “hot girls,” it was taken from the “Hot Girls for Bernie” movement. I’m a graphic designer, so initially this started just with an idea for comparable t-shirts. We wanted to design shirts and then donate that money to his campaign.
But the day after we ordered the shirts, Zohran reached his campaign finance goal. So we thought, how can we use these in a way that not only to leads to direct action, but influences the culture around the election and Zohran in general?
The idea is that voting for Zohran is something that makes you attractive. Sure, there are some conventionally attractive people who voted for him. But overall, our message is that you are attractive because you’re voting, and because you care about other people.
It’s no secret that these days, being “woke” is uncool—it’s cringey to be woke and to care about other people. Meanwhile, apathy towards others has become the “cool” thing to do.
But with the campaign, we wanted to make the statement that it’s actually not cool to not care. It’s cool to become involved in our communities when we have the opportunity to. We want to promote the idea that you will be held in high regard for caring, even if something isn’t directly negatively impacting you.
AS: I love the boundary-crossing and reaching to influence culture, because I think that all these communities can be echo chambers sometimes. As you started campaigning and growing this movement, did you see people outside of those echo chambers tangibly shift their perspectives or change their minds?
CC: We definitely saw what we referred to as the “boyfriend vote.” If you looked at a map of Wall Street and FiDi, they had all voted for Zohran, which we interpreted as finance boyfriends of socially conscious women voting for Zohran.
I was sent screenshots from dating apps where people were recommending that they go together on canvassing dates. It’s popular for straight men starting conversation to prove themselves to a woman.
I was on Hinge for a while, and because my face is in some of the Zohran videos, people who’d swipe up on my Hinge profile would lead with “I voted for Zohran.” In some cases it becomes this signifier of “hey, I’m voting for Zohran, I’m safe to date.”
AS: Yeah, that “boyfriend vote” reminds me of all the women bringing their boyfriends to the Barbie movie (which came out during a time that was labeled “summer of the girl”). Are there other “hot girls for/against” movements that have sprung out of this? Do you believe it will lose its value because other movements are co-opting it?
CC: There is “Hot Girls Eat Arby’s” — and also “Hot Girls for Capitalism.” The latter is an oxymoron to me. It’s inauthentic, because it’s not rallying around a large issue that a lot of people care about.
But it’s very easy to identify when people are doing something authentically, especially with this drastic shift into right-wing fascism. People, and women in particular, are realizing that the people who they surround themselves with are important. The partner who they choose is important.
AS: Speaking of romantic partners, would you and your community actively reject men who worked for certain companies or espoused certain ideologies?
CC: I think there are middling spaces—a lot of people don’t get a choice in this economy, they’re just trying to survive. You have to give people grace in a job market that is terrible. So if a guy worked for, let’s say, CitiBank or JP Morgan Chase, I wouldn’t mind.
But when it comes to places like Palantir or Lockheed Martin, in my friend groups and circles, it’s a hard no. If you are actively contributing to the harm of marginalized communities, it’s not something we are interested in. I could not feel like I could affiliate with a person contributing to genocide or violence in that way. And while some conservatism is more low key, it’s also become violent and drastic. It’s important as a man to clarify these days whether they support Trump or ICE raids.
The biggest trait I think about when it comes to dating is consideration and compassion for other people. That is something that some men on the right specifically might be lacking—the ability to empathize with more vulnerable communities.
I do think that women on the left like when someone goes out of their way to protect vulnerable communities. A cis-het man using their privilege to protect marginalized communities is attractive and something that people are looking for—especially in a world when the people who are doing the harm are usually men and usually white men.
AS: And what about women on the right? I noticed that Katie Miller, Stephen Miller’s wife, recently put out a podcast as a space for conservative women. Do you think this is somewhat of a response to these cultural women’s movements on the left?
CC: Everything is becoming more polarized, because the only response to extremism is extremism on the other side. In the same way that leftist or progressive women are becoming more left in response to right-wing fascism, women in the right are also trying to become more forward-facing in the culture as a knee-jerk response.
AS: You’re probably tired of hearing this, but I first became aware of “Hot Girls for Zohran” when Emily Ratajkowski joined the campaign. Were you in touch with her, and what does her involvement say to the culture?
CC: The day before the primary election was my birthday. I was at dinner with my co-organizer, who told me he had a present for me: that the campaign had reached out and asked for a shirt for EmRata. They asked if we wanted to come to Astoria the next day to film with her.
It was all totally out of the blue, and I went to sleep right away so I could wake up for the film shoot at 5am. The day of the primary, it felt very cool. Talking to her is awesome. I don’t think it changed the course of the election, but it was a powerful statement.
Conventionally attractive women like EmRata don’t need to speak up. She has a ton of money and fame. But she is choosing to, because she knows it’s the right thing to do. After her endorsement, people reached out to us after who wanted to canvas, so her influence did play a role. It’s priceless for people with a platform to do what she did, because people are more willing to listen. We are trying to make that more popular in these elite circles.
AS: Do you think that the success of cheeky campaigns like this have changed political messaging on the left? So that things are not as sanitized and carefully crafted by consultants?
CC: There are people in my friend group who I had been trying to get to canvass for years. But when we started Hot Girls for Zohran, they finally started—they wanted the t-shirt and the merch, to say that they played a role in making Zohran the Mayor of New York.
Fostering a community is going to push the left further. The right is pervasive in the culture, with their red hats and many influencers representing them. The left can combat this by building communities, and saying that we’re all in this together. This pulls people more in the middle towards community—and signals that we are open and willing to listen.
AS: There’s a General Election coming up in November. Beyond that, what’s next for your movement?
CC: We need to take into consideration what is going to get people involved. We have to communicate ideas not just to the people who agree.
The left can sometimes be challenged by purity politics, and there’s some honor to be had in that. But we also have to operate within the world we’re actually living in, not the world we want to live in. The people who are apathetic to politics are not going to be swayed by theory that is hard to digest. Our messaging has to be accessible, and that was the goal of our Zohran campaign. We held a lot of these fun events with the goal of registering people to vote.
I also think that the left needs to take notes from the right. Trump won the election because he had very simple ideas, and people didn't look further into it.
When we look ahead to the Zohran campaign, we have 120 volunteers working on content, events, and canvassing over the next few months. Our goal now is to make sure that in November, Zohran wins as big of a margin as possible. And when he’s elected, we’ll continue on with our tax the rich campaign, which will enable Zohran to get his plans funded—but also protect New York from any federal government retaliation for not obeying ICE.
Thanks for chatting! If you’re curious about the “hot girls” movement, you can check out Hot Girls for Zohran here.
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